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incredible devastation registered as painterly pink clouds when on March 21, 300 cruise
missiles destroyed two dozen buildings in a matter of minutes. In the city once again,
Peter Arnett exclaimed, "An amazing sight, just like out of an action movie, but this is
real."
As U.S. troops pressed into southern Iraq, TV images merged cinematic
references with reality-style camera perspectives. Viewers gazed across the sand from
inside army vehicles, a fantasy ride-along with desert warriors as the tanks and armored
convoys sped "virtually unopposed deep into the Iraqi desert" (CNN 3-21-03).
As with the reality show Cops that adopts the view of law enforcement, camera
and journalistic perspectives merged into a point of view united with the military effort.
Empowered by riding shotgun with the soldiers -- journalists barely contained their
excitement. They wore goggles, flack jackets and even reported through gas masks as
they adopted military jargon; "There are boots on the ground". They interviewed Top
Gun pilots and crawled along the ground with gunfire in the distance, pressing
microphones into soldier’s faces as they pointed their weapons. So surreal was the
experience that newscasters felt compelled to tell viewers that the images they were
seeing were live, not a movie.
Tom Brokaw (New York Times 3/23/03) understood the effects of such visual
and narrative representations: "Television cannot ever adequately convey the sheer brute
force of war, the noise and utter violence." This is certainly true when the violence and
brutality are edited out, while the excitement and heroics are sensationalized. But Brokaw
Convention